The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Install & use both VB6 and VS.Net

Install & use both VB6 and VS.Net

in my new laptop (IBM ThinkPad centrino with WinXP Pro, 512 MB) i like to install & use both VB6 and Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Please do you know any problem with this scenario?

- general functionality
- use or ocx/ActiveX in use with VB6
- use of MS Help Text for VB6

I've hear some problems about sharing the need Help Text for VB6 along with more recent MSDN Library versions.

I need to install some VB6 projects, using mainly non-DB stuff as winsock, imaging, printing, office com, FTP, HTML parsing...

i want install also VS :Net pro from my msdn-pro subscription in order to migrate some of this projects and for help with this installation to my son (15 years, you know) that is wanting to know VS.Net for Windows (along with other as maybe phyton).

Thanks.

Guillermo
Saturday, November 1, 2003

You can install both VB6 and Visual Studio .Net on the same machine without any problems. They each use a different version of the MSDN help system, so doing a full install of each one will take up several gigabytes of space on your harddrive. However, they can exist happily side-by-side.

Keep in mind that anything that you do with VB6, you can also do with VB.Net or C#. For example, you can use ActiveX components and automate Office applications using .Net. (They have to go through an extra step of COM interop behind the scenes, but it works rather seamlessly.)

If you have existing VB6 projects, it makes sense to use them with VB6. (Porting code to VB.Net isn't easy.) However, if you're starting new projects, it would make the most sense to go straight to VB.Net or C#.

Robert Jacobson
Saturday, November 1, 2003

I've found here (of course) an article about problems using Help from recent MSDN Library in old VS6:

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=66593&ixReplies=6

MSDN Library must be October 2001 or old...

Guillermo
Saturday, November 1, 2003

Right. This just means that there are two different variations of the MSDN library -- one for Visual Basic 6, and one for Visual Studio .Net. They aren't compatible -- you have to install both.

As long as you do complete installations of both VB6 and Visual Studio .Net, you shouldn't have any problems -- you'll just have two different versions of MSDN installed on your hard drive.

Robert Jacobson
Saturday, November 1, 2003

>>Keep in mind that anything that you do with VB6, you can also do with VB.Net or C#...but it works rather seamlessly.

I have to disagree with the "seamlessly" part. You do have to jump through a few hoops depending on the COM object that you're using. A big problem that I have with using COM tools in .Net are COM Methods that have a large number of "Optional" arguments that you have to pass NULL to. That is annoying.

I say that if you have a lot of COM tools already and you don't *need* to develop a given app in .Net, then don't.

Wayne
Monday, November 3, 2003